The invention relates to a yarn traversing mechanism for use in a winding apparatus for winding a continuously advancing yarn onto a rotating bobbin to form a yarn package.
A yarn winding apparatus of the described type is known from EP 0 677 019 and corresponding U.S. Pat. No. 5,624,081. In this apparatus, the yarn is reciprocated by means of a traversing apparatus in a direction transverse to the direction of the advancing yarn along a predetermined traverse stroke. The traversing apparatus is of the rotary blade type. It is therefore necessary that for purposes of equalizing the traversing speed over the entire traverse stroke, the yarn be deflected from the traversing plane by means of a guiding edge of a guide plate. This permits compensation of differences in the yarn guiding speeds of the rotary blade. Moreover, to equalize the looping angles on the guiding edges which occur as a result of deflecting the yarn, the known winding apparatus is provided in each end region of the traverse stroke with an auxiliary guide plate. Each of these auxiliary guide plates penetrates with its opposite guiding edge the traversing plane such as to deflect the yarn in the opposite direction.
With the above arrangement, the problem arises that during a package doff, the yarn is not freely deflectable in the stroke end regions and, thus, cannot be removed from the traversing range. In the stroke end regions, the deflection of the yarn is limited by the guiding edge of the main guide plate and the opposite guiding edge of the auxiliary guide plate.
Accordingly, it is the object of the invention to further develop a winding apparatus of the initially described kind such that in the stroke end regions, the yarn can be removed from the traversing apparatus for purposes of doffing a package. A further object of the invention is to make the length of the traverse stroke variable.